Klaas van Weringh bio

Klaas van Weringh is an Ottawa artist and playwright, as well as a community theatre actor and director.

Born in 1946 in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands, Klaas came to Canada with his family when he was six. He grew up mostly in Kingston, where he won the grade 13 math and science prize, and received a scholarship to study physics at Queen's University. However, Klaas was in love with theatre, and spent most of his time on acting and backstage work. In the end, he graduated with a B.A. in English literature.

Meanwhile Klaas was also developing another talent and began to focus his ambition on becoming a visual artist. After receiving a B.Ed. in 1975 he taught English for three years, and then he joined the Creative Arts Department at St Lawrence College in Kingston, where he taught drawing for ten years. These were all part time jobs which allowed him to work almost full time on painting.

Klaas exhibited in numerous juried group shows and several commercial galleries, had a number of his works reproduced on magazine and book covers, and then joined Kaspar Gallery in Toronto. His 1984 solo show at Kaspar Gallery was nationally advertised in the magazine, Canadian Art.

During these years, Klaas's paintings were in high demand, but he needed to support a family of four, so f rom 1988 to 1990, Klaas took an M.Sc. in Computing Science, and moved to Ottawa to work in software design, where he eventually became a software architect and then manager.

In 2002, he left Nortel and resumed his visual art. He also began writing, especially the play All Changed, which he continued to work on, learning about playwriting through many drafts. In addition, he resumed acting and directing, in community theatre, and has served on the executive of Tara Players, where he is currently Past President.

In 2007, Pizzazz, which Klaas directed for Tara Players, won five awards and six other nominations at the EODL One Act play festival. The same year, Klaas's drawing of his daughter was a finalist in Canada's national portrait competition, The Kingston Prize. And All Changed was a finalist in the Theatre BC 2007 National Playwriting Competition, the only runner up in the full length play category.

A professional production of All Changed, directed by Janet Irwin, was planned for May 2009 at The Gladstone in Ottawa, but was cancelled.